Dell Inspiron 8000
The Dell Inspiron 8000 was a high-end laptop produced by Dell in 2000. It used Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" CPUs, the Intel 815 chipset, and came with either ATI Rage Mobility M4 or NVidia GeForce 2 GO graphics. During its short lifespan, it was pretty much the most powerful laptop you could generally buy, and it remained that way until the updated Dell Inspiron 8100 appeared in 2001. Dell also used the basic Inspiron 8000 unit for the Latitude C800, which featured some different styling queues to better reflect that line of laptop. The Inspiron 8000 chassis is pretty similar to any of the lesser Inspiron models, to the point where I would imagine they are fairly interchangeable for the basic structural components. Performance and features Processor All Dell Inspiron 8000s use an Intel Pentium III "Coppermine" CPU, in the Socket 495 form factor; please note that this is not the same as the "Tulatin" CPU's socket, which is the newer 479/P type. As far as I can tell, the clock speeds range from about 850 MHz at the bottom end, to 1 GHz at the top end. Anything advertised as "700 MHz" is probably just the CPU throttling down as per SpeedStep, as this is the base clock speed for these CPUs, although this is definitely not a guarantee. The maintenance manual indicates the existence of Celeron versions as well, but I'm doubtful that many were built. At 700 MHz, the CPU is very easy to keep cool; as this laptop is compatible with SpeedFan's fan control, you can simply set both fans to 40% or 45%, and if you can handle the reasonable amount of noise they make, the CPU will stay fairly cool no matter what you throw at it. At 1 GHz (which was the speed of the Inspiron 8000 I owned), it is very hard to keep "Coppermine" PIIIs cool in my experience; you will have to crank the fans right up towards their extremely high maximum, and even then the temps will still creep up at maximum load. I would not recommend using the laptop on your lap for extended gaming sessions at its top CPU speed. I haven't ever had the system overheat, but it does get a little hot for my liking. A "Coppermine" PIII should be a very reasonable gaming device for games of the correct era, and would run Windows XP SP3 with little issue if it wasn't handicapped by the 815 chipset's RAM limitation (of which I will say more later.) It won't handle YouTube videos though, in reality, and web browsing will chug a little with any modern browser; this is par for the course with old laptops though. Self-monitored fan control As mentioned above, the Inspiron 8000 can have its fan speeds altered by SpeedFan, which is a very useful feature, and one I've rarely found to be the case. This is also pretty important in my opinion, because the CPU temperature gets way too high before the fans kick in for me; about 70-75C. I'd much rather see the fans kick in at 50 or 60, and I believe that this would be very beneficial for extending the system's lifespan and usability - particularly with the 1 GHz models running hot. It seems to me that Dell were stuck in a Pentium I-era fan management at this point, and simply left the temperature threshold so high because the PIII could handle it. Sure, it can, but it isn't ideal, and it makes using the laptop on a lap less comfortable than it could be. Graphics Lower-end (and/or earlier, as far as I can tell) Inspiron 8000s use the ATI Rage Mobility M4 GPU, whilst higher-end ones use the NVidia GeForce 2 GO GPU; as far as I can tell, both were available in 16MB or 32MB forms. The manual indicates the existence of an 8MB version as well, but I've never come across any Inspiron 8000 using this particular variant of the M4 GPU. Although the M4 was nothing particularly special by this point, the GeForce 2 GO was as good as laptop GPUs got in 2000, and certainly in 32MB form represented a huge step forward in laptop graphics. Although you're highly unlikely to be able to utilize the higher screen resolutions the Inspiron 8000 offered in later games, you shouldn't have much issue with any game from the rough time period of the Inspiron 8000's availability. Drivers aren't fantastic under Windows Milennium, but then again, which drivers were? My system came with the GeForce 2 GO GPU, and I don't recall ever having a major issue with temperature. Screen The Inspiron 8000 uses two different 15" TFT screens; one with a 1400x1050 resolution, and the other with a 1600x1200 resolution. Both were extremely high-end at the time, and, indeed, are higher resolutions than many modern laptop displays. Decent examples of either screen will give you really sharp images at the higher resolutions, and still look reasonable at lower ones. Both panels support screen scaling, although it is probable that the scaling will be imperfect without proper driver support, and during things such as Windows installations or Windows startup screens. Sound The Inspiron 8000 uses the ESS Maestro 3i sound chip, which was pretty common back in the day, and used on a wide range of laptops - both Dells, and other OEMs. It's a reasonable little chip for what it is, and although I haven't tested many games with laptops using such a sound chip (I have more experience with older variants), I do know that there are some games that offer explicit ESS AudioDrive options, which I would imagine these chips are compatible with. It should be as good as anything else from the time period at emulating a SoundBlaster, in reality, and drivers aren't much of an issue. Speaker-wise, the speakers are pretty decent for a laptop; for games, they're more than sufficient, and can be cranked up to quite high volumes as well. They're nothing special when it comes to music playback, but for their age, they're about as good as anything else was in 2000 laptops. The Inspiron 8000 also came fitted with a microphone, which is good quality, but suffers from being placed underneath the power button panel; this means that fan noise will be quite noticeable in your recordings. Chipset The Inspiron 8000 uses the Intel 815E chipset with a 100 MHz FSB. Whilst this is a perfectly stable chipset, it was never a particularly spectacular performer at this speed, and it is severely handicapped these days by a hard RAM ceiling of 512MB. It's probably best described as adequate, to be honest; Intel never did release a killer PIII chipset, and at least this isn't the terrible 810 or 820. Although the chipset was brand-new when this laptop was released, there are no obvious issues that I can detect with it, so at least Intel got that right out of the box! Power supply & battery As was common for the time, Dell designed the Inspiron 8000 to use its PA-6 adapter, which is a 20V, 3.5A adapter. You'll also find that the system will work perfectly well with the older PA-2 type, which has identical ratings, but uses an older figure-of-8 connector for its power input, rather than the newer (and theoretically safer) cloverleaf type. It used Dell's own power connector, but that's hardly a big deal considering how many laptops they built with it. This was not one of the Dell laptops that forces you to use a specific, official charger, so using a third-party one shouldn't be an issue. Battery-wise, these laptops shipped with an 8-cell lithium-ion battery. The advertised battery life was around 3 hours, whilst reviewers tended to place it in the 2 to 3 hour mark. My experiences with the similiarly-specced reproduction batteries will put it in the 2 to 3 hour range for moderate usage, whilst it may last a little longer whilst idling. The laptop has sensors that detect if you are using an improper battery; this won't flag up any reproduction batteries, but it will throw a flashing light at you if you use one of Dell's older batteries that was designed to charge at 3A. It will also notify you if your battery is completely knackered. If you fit two batteries, as is entirely feasible, then you will be able to have a very healthy battery life that will match many modern systems, although of course you'll be drawing in a lot more power that way. The batteries also charge very quickly when they're good. Other noteworthy features The Inspiron 8000 uses metal contacts for the keyboard, which give it a very nice quasi-mechanical feel, and a distinctive sound. Although some may find it a little off-putting, in my opinion it is the best laptop keyboard that I've ever used. There is a trackpoint in the keyboard, in addition to the trackpad, and two mouse buttons for each device. The Inspiron 8000 offers a fixed optical drive in addition to the two modular bays; so as well as it being possible to have two batteries, you can have two optical drives as well (be that a DVD drive, CD drive, or floppy disk drive), which is a nice feature. There is a single wireless aerial present inside the laptop, so I'd recommend using a PCMCIA WiFi adapter if you need a wireless internet connection. Not all models came with Ethernet cards, which is also worth baring in mind - some only have modems, and of course, some may have been stripped of the cards. They're of the Mini PCI type, so they're easy enough to source. Operating system flexibility Dell offer a comprehensive set of Dell Inspiron 8000 drivers for Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, and Windows 2000. Noticing a noteworthy omission? Yes, they have no Windows XP drivers on their website. However, this is not a real problem; Windows XP, in my experience, already contains all of the drivers that the laptop needs, and if you want a more up-to-date GPU driver for the GeForce 2 GO, you can always pinch the driver from the Inspiron 8100 page. The only glaring omission in any of the above OSes is that Windows NT 4.0 and 95/98 do not have GeForce 2 GO drivers listed; but quite frankly, the GPU would be totally wasted on NT 4.0 or 95, and I would expect the Me driver to work under 98. The audio driver is also missing for those operating systems, but the same thing applies. Maintenance feasibility Ease of physically working on the system The Inspiron 8000, for the most part, is extremely easy to work on. None of the screws are particularly hidden from view, and the maintenance manual is very thorough, as is typical for an older Dell product. The RAM slot cover and the NIC cover both will require levering off with a flathead screwdriver in most cases, but otherwise, if your laptop is in decent shape, it will come apart fairly easily. The only real problem with maintaining the system will come when you need to change the CMOS battery, which is rather stupidly located within the palmrest. To get at it, you will need to take the palmrest off the laptop, remove the metal shield from underneath, and then disconnect the battery. Make sure to slide the front edge of this shield underneath the plastic section when you put it back together, or the front mouse buttons will not click. Ease of getting parts/complete systems The Inspiron 8000 is pretty much one of the easiest PIII-era systems to obtain parts for. The major point in its favour was the fact that Dell chose to offer two standardized modular bays on a wide range of their laptops, and this means that anything designed for these bays - batteries, floppy drives, CD/DVD drives etc - are fairly easy to obtain, and they won't cost you a fortune either. Indeed, you can generally get brand-new, reproduction batteries for under £15 posted, and new CMOS batteries are easily imported from China for a low cost as well. Finding Inspiron 8000s in varying states of repair isn't that hard either; you'll usually find at least half a dozen on eBay at any one time. Durability/reliability In my experience, the Inspiron 8000 tends to stand up pretty well. The screen hinges will probably be a little loose due to the effects of 15 years or so and a heavy screen, but they don't tend to disintegrate, and they're rarely too bad. The main weak point seems to be that the palmrests always come apart; the metal rails will usually shear off from the plastic. It's not terminal or a big deal; you can either glue them back on, or just leave it, as the palmrest will generally still be fairly secure anyway. The very thin plastic above the PCMCIA slots also has a tendency to crack or bend inwards, but this is not generally a problem. Beyond these niggles, and the inevitability that some of the plastic mounting points may be weak due to age, you shouldn't expect things to just start falling out. Reliability-wise, there are still a few Inspiron 8000s kicking around in good shape, and I don't see any real weak points in the computational hardware. Quirks There is only one quirk of real note to these systems; as with all of its direct relatives, you must have a hard drive of some description fitted, and working, for the fixed optical drive to be detected in BIOS. So if you see an Inspiron 8000 advertised as having a faulty optical drive when it has no hard drive present, there is every possibility that the seller was simply unaware of this trait, and that the drive may actually be good. Rating In my opinion, the Dell Inspiron 8000 is a fantastic example of a high-end PIII laptop, and the only thing that would stop me from wholeheartedly recommending it over pretty much anything else is the existence of the Inspiron 8100. Why? Because the Inspiron 8100 used the quicker, cooler and more power efficient "Tulatin" PIIIs (and at higher clock speeds as well), and they also offered up to a 64MB ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 GPU, which is significantly quicker and more efficient than the GeForce 2 GO. That being said, if you can't find an Inspiron 8100, and temperatures aren't a real concern for you, then there's little reason not to go with the Inspiron 8000. Good, mediocre, bad Good *Parts are plentiful and affordable - even new batteries are cheap. *Maintenance manual is fairly in-depth, well written/structured, and easily found on Dell's website. *High-end models were as powerful as they got, back in 2000. *SpeedFan can actually control the fan speed - at least it can under Windows XP! *At 700 MHz, the laptop is easily kept cool by setting both fans to be permanently at 40/45% or so in SpeedFan. *Two decently-sized fans, located together at the back of the chassis - both move a lot of air at higher speeds. *Uses Dell's modular bays. Mediocre *Intel 815 chipset is hard limited to 512MB RAM. *Intel 815 chipset isn't a particularly impressive performer with the 100 MHz FSB that Coppermine PIIIs are restricted to in laptops. *CMOS battery is located within the palmrest, underneath the metal shield. *Palmrests are fragile; prone to having the rails part company with the plastic (has happened on every single palmrest I've owned for these, and that's about 5 or so). *Fans are noisy, even at minimal speeds. *A hard drive must be fitted for the fixed optical drive to actually be visible to the BIOS. *No official Dell drivers for XP; Windows 98 drivers page lacking in GeForce 2 GO and audio driver support. Bad *Coppermine PIIIs get rather hot at the 1 GHz mark, even with very high fan speeds. *Lets the CPU get way too hot for my liking before cranking the fans up. Reviews *ITworld *PCMag.com *ZDNet Useful links *Official Dell page *Owner's manual